Some Roads are Long, Some are Winding

And, if Paul McCartney has taught me nothing else, some are both. This is the second time I’ve mentioned Sir Paul in the last ten minutes. The previous was a jealousy laden Facebook message to a friend who has tickets to see him at the Carrier Dome here in Syracuse on Saturday.

So he was on my mind already, but when I got to thinking about what I was going to write to you today, he popped up again, because I’m reflecting on what a long and winding sort of thing writing can be.

I’ve posted frequently (ok, constantly) about my work on the third book in the Cerah of Quadar series, and had even announced at one point that I’d hoped to have the first draft finished soon. I may have even said by the end of this month.

That is not going to happen. There are a number of reasons, not the least of which is the chapter from hell, on which I’ve been stuck for approximately three hundred and seventy-five years. No matter how much I plead and swear and threaten, it will just not do what I want it to do. A winding part of the road has been reached.

Now, I’ve been at this for a while, and I know that sometimes these walls pop up out of nowhere, and you have to, if you’re going to be serious about this gig, learn to deal. To overcome. And fear not. I know that I will.

But I have something else I need to do first. This is where the road winds back around in the other direction.

Due to the nature of this new project, I’m not able to go into a lot of detail about it. There is way more I can’t say about it than there is that I can. BUT… I can tell you I’m excited about it, I’m going to have fun doing it, and it’s going to allow me to work some different muscles than I have recently.

This brings me to a somewhat more significant turn in the road. Genre-wise, my two published novels, as well as the current effort, have been in the fantasy genre. Dating back to my introduction to Middle Earth in high school, this has been a favorite of mine, and when the line that started my journey of writing about Cerah popped into my head back in 2009 I knew that would be what kind of book hers would be.

The way I’ve conceived the entire Quadar saga, it will require the book I’m working on and one more after that to tell the whole story. When it is done, I am probably going to be moving away from the fantasy genre for the foreseeable future.

Part of what I’ve learned preparing for this new project is that I enjoy telling other types of stories. Part of what I’ve learned writing fantasy for as long as I have is that there are a lot of people who enjoy it, and even more who really, really don’t.

So I’m thinking in terms of reaching a larger group of readers. I’m thinking in terms of seeing what I’m capable of. I’m thinking in terms of a road that could lead anywhere, with any number of winding turns. And I’m thinking I might just see where that road takes me.